Pain-Free Animals Could Take Suffering Out of Farming

Philosopher Adam Shriver suggested that genetically engineering cows to feel no pain could be an acceptable alternative to eliminating factory farming in a paper published in Neuroscience. Work by neuroscientist Zhou-Feng Chen at Washington University may turn Shriver's suggestion a reality. Chen has been working on identifying the genes that control "affective" pain, the unpleasantness part of a painful sensation. He has managed to isolate a gene called P311, and has found that mice who do not have P311 don't have negative associations with pain, although they do react negatively to heat and pressure. This could end much of the concern about cruel farming practices, but unfortunately still leaves my design for the fiery hamburger punch in the unethical column.

Comments

Just like taking an aspirin...

[jeffb (2.718)]

...eliminates the soul-sucking ennui of day-to-day life.

I think they're missing the point.

Insanity

[Philip K Dickhead]

CAN != Should

Re:Insanity

[geekoid]

While true, how about you make a point on why they shouldn't?

Kind of Creepy and Absurd

[Comatose51]

It might sound like a good idea but I find the whole idea of genetically engineering cows so they don't feel pain so we can eat them without guilt is kind of creepy, surreal, and absurd. The far simpler solution is to eEither stop eating meat or continue eating it the same way we have for as long as there has been humans. I mean what's next? Engineer ourselves to not feel pain? Then is it OK to murder?

Re:Kind of Creepy and Absurd

[ChienAndalu]

The next step is to grow meat without a central nervous system at all, in arbitrary size.

It sounds creepy, but only because it is unusual. When you think about it, this method of producing meat is superior.

Re:Kind of Creepy and Absurd

[ArsonSmith]

I think we should engineer plants to feel pain. That way we can screw over the pussy vegetarians and they're attempts to attain a moral high ground.

Re:Stupid

[acon1modm]

I think cattle are kept in individual pens just large enough for them to fit in, they can't even turn around. I don't think they can get into much trouble.

I could be wrong about this , I just saw it in a documentary.

its not the pain

[gbrandt]

Feeling no pain is different from experiencing distress. Its not the pain that most activists are worried about, its the living conditions, the over crowding, the bad feed.

Get a grip.

Gregor

Re:its not the pain

[cowscows]

Although they might not be as well developed as human emotions, anyone who's spent any significant amount of time with an mammal at least as complex as a dog or cat should be convinced that they most certainly can experience states of mind that include things like fear or stress. They are definitely more comfortable in some situations than they are in others. I personally have not spent much time around cows, but it seems rather likely to me that someone who has would easily be able to tell what sorts of situations they find unpleasant.

Re:Um, how about no?

[Phase Shifter]

Not to mention, it will be end of barbed wire fences as an effective means of containing cattle.
Probably a reduction in the effectiveness of electric fences, too.
Makes you wonder what kind of conditions they expect to raise the cattle under.

Brainless!

[Smivs]

Why not just 'engineer' them to have no brain at all, just like the guy who suggested this!

Re:Brainless!

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you are saying is that you are willing to bastardize nature so you don't have any guilt? Animals eat other animals, it's a normal process. If you feel guilt you can be a vegetarian...

Re:Brainless!

[Ian Alexander]

Even if the animal cannot feel physical pain, it's still going to be spending its entire life in cramped, inhumane living conditions.

Bingo. The problem isn't the physical pain the animals feel. It's the terrible conditions they're made to live in. Most animals can't contemplate death (we count as at least one exception) but I am pretty sure they're able to be dissatisfied with living their entire lives in an overcrowded box doing nothing but gaining weight.

To borrow an example from somewhere in Michael Pollan's excellent The Omnivore's Dilemma, pigs are weaned off their mother's milk after ten days so they can be put on a special feed that makes them gain weight faster in modern industrial meat production. It helps the bottom line, but it does leave the improperly-weaned pig with a lifelong urge to chew and suck. What's the only thing to chew and suck in a pen full of your fellow pig? Their tails, of course. So they chew and suck the tails of their fellow-pigs, who, unlike normal, healthy pigs, have given up fighting off any potential tail-biters.

That causes infection, which raises costs. The common "solution" is to cut the pigs' tails off when they're young. Without anesthetic (Why bother? A pig can't sue you for inhumane treatment...). Sure, having pain-free pigs would make the act of cutting off the tail less inhumane, but it's not really solving the problem of why you need to cut these pigs' tails off in the first place.

In my view, the problem is industrialized agriculture practices. The approach has been: treat these complex, living, breathing animals as simple meat-growing machines. Pack them together as close as possible, that kind of thing. When they get sick, the solution isn't to ask why they're living knee-deep in their own sewage like no healthy animal should, it's to put them on antibiotics. When they get depressed and start eating each others' tails off, the solution isn't to ask why they feel the need to chew and suck their whole lives. The solution is to cut the tail off early. When people begin to complain about the pain these animals feel, the solution isn't to ask why these animals' lives are so painful, it's to take away their capacity for pain.

Re:Brainless!

[Ian Alexander]

That's a very good point, but there are also other things you can do. There are many farms across the country that still operate on a sustainable basis that treat their animals more humanely than in industrial CAFOs. Their meat tends to taste better anyways because the animals are generally getting the food they actually need- cows and chickens are actually getting grass instead of corn- so it actually tastes like how that animal should taste. If you can support those local farmers, you can grow the market for that kind of meat. There probably won't ever be large companies doing sustainable, humane, meat production, but if enough little guys get into the business again who needs large companies?

Though, of course, there are more ecological benefits to quitting meat. Meat is way more resource-intensive to produce than plants.

Re:Brainless!

[Atario]

Sounds like the solution is to engineer the ability to grow slabs of pure standalone muscle. No pain, no consciousness -- no animal at all; just tissue.

This will only help cruelty

[SuperBanana]

This could end much of the concern about cruel farming practices, but unfortunately still leaves my design for the fiery hamburger punch in the unethical column.

No, I think it will only raise the concerns. Just because an animal can't feel you pushing it around with a forklift doesn't mean it isn't cruel. Further, pain is a safety of sorts...that an animal can feel pain and react to it is motivation for its owners/caretakers to treat it properly. Granted, there are some sick people who don't care, but thankfully, many people at least feel guilt at the sound and sight of an animal in pain. Why exactly are we taking that away, instead of treating the animals better? Oh yes, right, profit.

Furthermore, while I enjoy a tasty cheeseburger as much as any other omnivore, I have enough vegetarian friends to know that their concerns in the "treatment of animals" department (there are MANY reasons people go vegetarian) extend well beyond immediate pain. It's also the concept of keeping animals in captivity they object to, and they don't really mean the cute farm your kids draw. They mean the megafarms where animals spend their entire lives in a pen the size of your shower.

I've heard this somewhere before...

[Minwee]

'That's absolutely horrible,' exclaimed Arthur, 'the most revolting thing I've ever heard.'

'What's the problem Earthman?' said Zaphod, now transfering his attention to the animal's enormous rump.

'I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing there inviting me to,' said Arthur, 'It's heartless.'

'Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten,' said Zaphod.

'That's not the point,' Arthur protested. Then he thought about it for a moment. 'Alright,' he said, 'maybe it is the point. I don't care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just ... er ... I think I'll just have a green salad,' he muttered.

'May I urge you to consider my liver?' asked the animal, 'it must be very rich and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself for months.'

Exactly!

[commodoresloat]

Don't these idiots know that the suffering is where all the good flavor is?

Re:Exactly!

[mpoulton]

Disclaimer: I do not believe cows suffer unduly as a general rule, and I do not believe that refusing to eat beef on ethical grounds is anything short of dumb. Add a willingness to eat fish despite the ethical objection to beef, and you're a complete hypocrite (fish are suffocated to death, while livestock are usually killed fairly painlessly). Bring on the surf and turf!

I eat fish and avoid beef on ethical grounds. I'm not dumb, or hypocritical. Every morality-based lifestyle choice operates only within certain limits, and the extent of those limits is a manifestation of the degree of importance the individual places on the underlying moral issue. The issue at hand is also not nearly as simple as you claim it to be. My primary concern is not the last five minutes of my food's life, it's everything that happens beforehand. Wild-caught fish live in a completely natural state until they are caught. While many bad things may happen to those fish in nature, humans don't cause those problems! Fish also lack the same type and degree of pain sensation that mammals have (though some studies indicate that they perceive something pain-like). Cows, on the other hand, exist only at the will of their owners, and any suffering they endure is entirely our fault. They process pain the same way humans do. I believe that, in general, livestock are not treated with the degree of care throughout their lives that is owed to a captive sentient being. Therefore, I eat fish and not beef. You may disagree with the value judgments inherent in this argument, and may dispute some of the uncertain facts regarding the nature of suffering and pain sensation (since these issues are legitimately subject to scientific debate), but that does not make my reasoning or my conclusion "dumb" or "hypocritical" any more than yours is.

Re:Exactly!

[timeOday]

IMHO the big fallacy here is assuming there is some fundamental distinction between living and nonliving things. It is all chemical processes, a swirling eddy in a larger flow of physical process that is the universe. Humans are for now the gold standard for "alive," a dog is "rather alive," fish are "somewhat alive," plants are "slightly alive," and fire is "arguably a little bit alive." The immorality of killing has to depend on how much life was snuffed out.

Re:Double no

[FCAdcock]

Pain is a very useful sensation. Pain keeps people from doing stupid things, or from CONTINUING to do stupid things.

Ever been burned by hot water? If you were to sit in water over 110 for very long you would litterally boil yourself to death. When you put your feet in the tub and scream, that's your body's way of telling you not to boil yourself.

Ever had a broken bone? When you move a broken bone your body quickly tells you that doing so isn't the best idea by kicking in the pain. Moving it will lenghen the time it takes to heal.

Touch a hot stove often? cut yourself while shaving? sunburn? all of those things are things you want to avoid, but wouldn't know to without pain.

And you do NOT want a 1200lb cow without the ability to feel pain. That fence that keeps it from escaping onto the freeway wouldn't hold her in very long if the cow didn't feel pain. Cows are large, but not very bright. They don't understand what a car is. They don't understand what a road is. They just know they're wandering.

Evolution is a wonderful thing. If we don't need something, evolution gets rid of it. And just because we've gotten all technological and all now does not diminish the fact that we still need to feel pain.

Re:What is this doing under idle?

[Brian Gordon]

They're not bred to survive, they're bred to die.

I do see the philosophical ramifications though. Why force all these miserable fast food workers to slave away all day when we can make fast food workers that enjoy it? That kind of thing.

Exactly. Suffering != Pain

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a vegetarian myself but being a political activist in all kinds of things, etc. I know well over a dozen vegetarians and vegans. I have never heard anyone claim that they wouldn't eat meat because of the physical suffering of the animals. That idea is not only new to me but sounds absurd.

Most vegetarians and vegans don't eat meat because how cruel the whole system is. Having very large amounts of living, feeling beings raised in overcrowded conditions where some (chickens) can barely move and others (pigs) are overfed so much and given so little exercise that they can't even stand (their legs aren't strong enough to carry them) towards the end... That is what people feel to be horrible. Not the killing (it happens in nature too) or the physical pain (To my understanding, most aren't in constant physical pain) but treating living, feeling beings like that. Most I've discussed this with have said that they would eat meat if the animals were treated better.

This "solution" doesn't remove suffering or cruelty, it removes the physical pain involved, which never was the major issue.

That all said, I'm sure that this could have some other practical applications.

Factory Farms

[MaryBethP]

Pain is not my problem with eating animals. Inhumane conditions are the problem! Removing the "pain" part of it would open up even more excuses for factory farming. Seeing that an animal is in pain when it's killed is essential to respecting its life and purpose--and to preventing over-abundance of killing. A hunter should kill out of need and learns that when he sees and animal suffer (read the story of the Rainbow Warrior). Factory farms and lack of pain remove us from this natural cycle. ugh. Don't get me started...

Re:What is this doing under idle?

[icebike]

Because its a solution looking for a problem.

Your average farm animal does not suffer much pain in its life. At least not since we stopped harnessing them for pulling plows.

Large animals, cattle, hogs, probably feel one brief instance of pain as the are slaughtered, but other than that modern
animal husbandry does not involve inflicting pain. Even the ear tags used on cows do not seem to bother them much.
Watching them punch those tags in, many animals don't even seem to notice.

Chickens and turkeys life in crowded areas, and occasionally stampede each other, but other than that they live
a boring but pain free existence.

This is a stupid idea. The animals would hurt themselves more with this than without it. The barbed wire fence would
rip grazing cattle to shreds if they couldn't feel it.

Re:What is this doing under idle?

[Rary]

How did I know you vegans would weigh in with your overwrought horror stories.

Unlike you, I've actually worked on a farm, so don't bring that nonsense around here.

Right, because we all know that the world's demand for meat is easily met by your little family farms, and that industrial factory farming is entirely a myth propagated by smelly hippie animal rights terrorists to further their agenda of enslaving meat-eating humans.

In the U.S., four companies produce 81 percent of cows, 73 percent of sheep, 57 percent of pigs and 50 percent of chickens. In 1967, there were one million pig farms in America; as of 2002, there were 114,000, with 80 million pigs (out of 95 million) killed each year on factory farms as of 2002, according to the U.S. National Pork Producers Council. According to the Worldwatch Institute, 74 percent of the world's poultry, 43 percent of beef, and 68 percent of eggs are produced this way.